VGA Cooler

rakudakaji · 07-02-2009, 06:19 PM

Soo, my nVidia 7900 GT has been nice and cool for it's 3 or 4 years, but recently, while lugging my PC to a LAN, I believe that something happened to my video card, and the fan may be not be performing as well as it used to... or something, but at that LAN, for the first time, it overheat. I got all those lines going down my screen during a heated match of SC, which sucks lol... So we all agree it's probably a heated GPU... turn it off, give it some rest, game some, get into another game of SC, happens again. Why is this happening on SC, when I played more graphic intense games just before, I don't know. Anyway, take it home, play some WoW... WoW crashes, I turn it off for a while, play WC3, and my card randomly decided to make things all weird (I have 2 pics: 1 and 2). I decide to turn it off for the night. I kept it off for a good 16 hours or so, and decide to play WoW again today. Play for about an hour, and bam, crash. Instantly after turning it off, I take off the side panel, and touch my card... It's burning hot!

Now, the real question is, I need a VGA Cooler for my 7900 GT, but it also needs to fit a 200 series card. I was looking at this because of it's good reviews, newegg among other sites, and it's inexpensiveness. But, will it fit on a 200 series card do you think?

Currently, I have a small fan blasting cool air near my video card for a ghetto, makeshift cooler, is that a good idea?

**Joe_B_Me** · 07-02-2009, 06:51 PM

Before going out and buying that, you could use a program called rivatuner to set the fan speed up to 100%. If you have already done that, I would recommend doing a ghetto mod, like this.

(my former 7800gtx)
http://img393.imageshack.us/i/fins1vs.jpg/
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4642/dscn0023k.jpg
Full load temperature before the addition of the extra fan was 82C
Full load temperature with the fan was 59-60C
That's a 23C difference. I used a 70mm fan that was taken from an amd heatsink, using the 4 screws with that to screw that into my 7800gtx's heatsink. You can use 80mm fans also.

rakudakaji · 07-02-2009, 08:07 PM

I used RivaTuner and it didn't do much :/. I'd use your ghetto-mod suggestion but I don't have a spare fan on me atm, maybe one of my friends do, but for now I'm sticking with my small fan (and by that I mean, I had to open my the side of my case, place a fan next to it, and point it towards the video card... out of three levels of power like most fans, level 1 full loads at about 65C, level 2 full loads at around 63C, and level 3 full loads around 60C) , keeping it about 15C cooler than w/ RivaTuner on full loads.

After turning off the fan, in a matter of 5 minutes the card blasts up to around 78C, and I didn't want to risk it going further, so I turned it back on.

**Joe_B_Me** · 07-02-2009, 08:18 PM

There's nothing wrong with ghetto cooling until an actual real cooling solution can be applied. At least you can play your games now worry free. If not, you probably have a dying a video card.

rakudakaji · 07-02-2009, 08:24 PM

Yeah my guess is that it's dying, but that's fine considering I'm planning on upgrading to a 200 series in the coming months... wasn't too worried until I was looking at Prototype, min recommended card is a 7800 lol

Deth.Addict · 07-03-2009, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rakudakaji

Anyway, take it home, play some WoW... WoW crashes, I turn it off for a while, play WC3, and my card randomly decided to make things all weird (I have 2 pics: 1 and 2).

I was thinking how that's what happens in my visual cortex when I take drugs like acid (pic #2), maybe it is possible part of my brain, something like a GPU, is "overheating." :S

furball zen · 07-03-2009, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rakudakaji

Soo, my nVidia 7900 GT has been nice and cool for it's 3 or 4 years, but recently, while lugging my PC to a LAN, I believe that something happened to my video card, and the fan may be not be performing as well as it used to... or something, but at that LAN, for the first time, it overheat. I got all those lines going down my screen during a heated match of SC, which sucks lol... So we all agree it's probably a heated GPU... turn it off, give it some rest, game some, get into another game of SC, happens again. Why is this happening on SC, when I played more graphic intense games just before, I don't know. Anyway, take it home, play some WoW... WoW crashes, I turn it off for a while, play WC3, and my card randomly decided to make things all weird (I have 2 pics: 1 and 2). I decide to turn it off for the night. I kept it off for a good 16 hours or so, and decide to play WoW again today. Play for about an hour, and bam, crash. Instantly after turning it off, I take off the side panel, and touch my card... It's burning hot!

Now, the real question is, I need a VGA Cooler for my 7900 GT, but it also needs to fit a 200 series card. I was looking at this because of it's good reviews, newegg among other sites, and it's inexpensiveness. But, will it fit on a 200 series card do you think?

Currently, I have a small fan blasting cool air near my video card for a ghetto, makeshift cooler, is that a good idea?

Yea, its shot. Just replace it. My 9250 did that, but due to a crappy Sunbeam PSU. Nothing i could do would fix it, so i had to RMA it, and i got a new one in return.

rakudakaji · 07-03-2009, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by furball zen

Yea, its shot. Just replace it.

I don't want to, but I agree 100% with it. Even more to support it just being shot, the thing barely reaches over 73ºC but still freezes and I have some graphical errors. Too bad it couldn't shoot out another 2 months till my birthday when I was getting a new PSU and 200 series card, guess I gotta act now.